German Masters 2011 - preview

06:39:00
Ramona Dragomir
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February has just kicked off and we are already heading to the beautiful capital of Germany - the mighty, filled with history Berlin. Here, a revived snooker tournament will be staged for the next five days - the German Masters. The event saw the Sun’s light back in 1995 under the name of German Open, when John Higgins beat the Irish Ken Doherty 9-3 in the final, continued with Ronnie’s victory over Canadian Alan Robidoux 9-7 and ended one year later with another victory obtained by "The Wizard of Wishaw", this time in the match played against John Parrott 9-4.

There was a tentative of bringing snooker back to Germany in the following year, the year of 1998 only that this time the tournament had another name German Masters and it wasn’t a ranking event anymore. The final was given between Mark Williams and John Parrot, the last of them beating the first, 6-4. And so Germany was practically erased from the snooker tournaments map.But Barry Hearn’s revolutionary plan has a main target - to make snooker popular and to make an international sport out of it. That’s why this year we shall have the honor and pleasure to see snooker played in different countries, more then we were used to; and since Brazil will stage its Brazil Masters in September, Germany, a country that loves and cherish snooker had to have its share of snooker tournaments, so German Masters event was brought to life. :-)

Higgins has two German titles. Will he be asking for more?

The event will run from February 2 to 6 and will feature the heavy names in snooker and of course some wildcards. As you already know the qualifying rounds were held in December 2010 at the World Snooker Academy from Sheffield, those who got a free ticket to the tournament being: Anthony Hamilton, Thanawat Thirapongpaiboon, Jack Lisowski, Liu Song, Nigel Bond, Judd Trump, Andrew Higginson, Matthew Stevens, Anthony McGill, Dominic Dale, Joe Perry, Stephen Lee, Ryan Day, Joe Swail, Marco Fu and Robert Milkins. Also, eight players have received a wildcard for the 2011 German Masters: Luca Brecel, Lasse Munstermann, Mario Wehrmann, Maurice Le Duc, Hans Blanckaert, Tomasz Skalski, Stefan Kasper and Daniel Wells. The format is quite simple, "best of 9 frames" being the rule for the first rounds including the quarter-finals, "best of 11" for the semis and "best of 17" for the big final.

All these being said, let’s wish the boys good luck in smelling the German ham (that by the way is very tasty :-P) and see how’s the first day of the competition going to look like, shall we?

From 19:00 (UK time) - although it was announced that EuroSport will cover the entire event, due to some "technical reasons", the first day won`t be televised, so we won`t be able to see the boys perform tonight :-(

Jack Lisowski v. Luca Brecel

Anthony Hamilton v. Pavel Leyk

Thanawat Thirapongpaiboon v. Tomasz Skalski

Nigel Bond v. Stefan Kasper

Joe Swail v. Hans Blanckaert

Enjoy snooker in Germany my dears and see you tomorrow for the first impressions! ;-)